It seems that it is hard to be an extremely popular musician but still be a revolutionary at the same time. Certainly Wyclef Jean disproves that. After The Fugees became a monstrous music phenomenon they stopped making music and they all went on to solo projects with Wyclef being the most successful. Now hes breaking into movies as the drug dealer in the cop film Dirty and reuniting with The Fugees in Dave Chappelles Block Party.

Wyclef Jean: Actors usually want to be musicians and musicians want to be actors. I was doing off Broadway plays and I had a little tiny studio and I was recording music and when the music got big we left acting behind. I love books, I love scripts, I love reading. When I got the script for Dirty I was like Damn, another black man playing a drug dealer. I wanted to take this character and twist some eeriness into it. I called the director and told him I wanted to throw a Kingston accent on this character. He really loved it. It took me like a week to just get the dialect down pact.

DRE: Did you grow up Haitian music?

WJ: I grew up with church music because my dad was a minister. After that I really got into reggae. Then my uncle used to play a lot of copa music in his house but when youre a kid you dont necessarily think what your uncle plays is cool. My primary influence is world music. In school I studied jazz, I performed at Carnegie Hall with the Philharmonic Orchestra. I have no boundaries. Im a music lover. The only thing thats hard to hear is techno unless Im drunk, then it works.

DRE: Do you find acting and music similar?

WJ: No I love to do different things and I love characters. I always want to do something different. For my next role I want to play something different.

DRE: Dirty is about loyalty and ratting when it seems right, how do you feel about those things?

WJ: Whether youre in the streets, whether youre in the police force or whether youre in the military, at the end of the day everyone abides by a code. A code is always that you cant betray your family. You know who your family is so at the end of the day no matter what happens people want to feel a sense of loyalty. In hip-hop you are taught at a very young age that its not good to be a rat.

DRE: I got to speak to Michel Gondry about Block Party. He said that even he and Dave Chappelle didnt know there was going to be a Fugees reunion until about five minutes before you all walked on stage.

WJ: Hes so right. When you talk about the Fugees man you just talk about rock and roll. This is purely a drama band and I think thats why it works so well. Youre talking about a group that didnt talk for eight years until we all got this call from Dave Chappelle. Dave was trying to put the Fugees back together but the thing is you cant put the Fugees back together because the Fugees never broke up in the first place. When you break up you publicly show up and you say this group is no longer. None of the Fugees said that. All we kept doing was moving forward, doing solo projects. If we had drama with each other it was talked about through the music and we kept it moving. Dave came at it in the purest form. He was like Yo, I got this block party and Id love you guys to play. Then Lauryn called Pras. Even though we got problems everyone forgot about it. It didnt hit us until the time we were going on stage that we aint played in like nine years.

DRE: What did it feel like?

WJ: It felt like Wow! I grew up like listening to Jimi Hendrix. I used to watch Kiss and The Beatles and The Fugees is a rock and roll group. A lot of times you dont think of that until were walking towards the stage and everyone starts looking at us like were these gods. It was an incredible moment in time captured on film.

DRE: What was it having that moment take place in that neighborhood in Brooklyn?

WJ: It was amazing especially for me since my first stop from Haiti was Brooklyn. I know how important block parties are and I have a history of block parties so it was just incredible.

DRE: There was that scene in Block Party, where you have a speech you give to some kids.

WJ: Kids are the most important we deal with in the foundation Yele Haiti. Kids are the future. Realistically were on our way out and kids are on their way in so we have to pass on our information. Theres an elder right now whose 65 years old and he passes off information to me because he feels like hes on his way out and that I should take his information. I transmit it to the kid and when the kid is in that position he hopefully will understand what to do.

DRE: Whats coming up next?

WJ: I just did a song with Shakira called Hips Dont Lie. Im on the seven day diet because I have to do a video with Shakira. Im starving myself because I got to rock my tank top.

We have a documentary called Ghosts of Cit Soleil about the gang violence in Haiti which were trying to get into Cannes right now. It took two years to shoot and its about a bunch of kids in Haiti who identify themselves with hip-hop artists. But now all the kids in the movie are dead.

DRE: Do you want to write your own movie?

WJ: Im writing a script called Carnival. Im also working on a book which is probably going to come out three years from now. I went to Barnes and Nobles and I found that theres no book on Haiti. So I want to write a book about me as a kid living in Haiti. It will about the mystery of why Haiti is the way it is and why its relevant to the world.

DRE: What about a new Fugees album?

WJ: I call it Fugees rehab, thats basically it. Were a group that cant be bought. We dont have a budget so we dont really believe you can give us money and say go and do an album and you guys will make $300 million. Back in the day people used to put out 45s until theyre ready. We have so much music and ideas in our heads so we did a deal with Verizon because Verizon could download full songs on their phone and now everybody has a phone. We got Take it Easy that you could download on the phone and we got another one called Foxy. Those are our 45s.